If you want a more current assessment of oven types, you might also want to post at the PMQ Think Tank forum frequented mainly by professionals: http://thinktank.pmq.com/viewforum.php?f=6. As you will see from reading posts at the PMQ TT, there is a great deal of risk opening a new pizza establishment, so proceed carefully.

Do your market research.Decide what type of Pizza you LOVE to make .See if there is a NICHE market for that type of Pizza.Write a conservative business plan.Make sure you have the financial resources to follow your dream. David

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If you're looking for a date... go to the Supermarket.If you're looking for a wife....go to the Farmers market

My general advise would be that PMQ seams to be addressed to standard commercial pizzeria and not to quality/gourmet pizza business. Thus if you are focusing on a niche market or quality pizza, I would forget all their reccomandation and do follow what David has advised above.

I interpreted pizarest's reference to pans at this post, http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4493.msg37564.html#msg37564, to mean that he is interested in an oven for a standard commercial pizzeria. PMQ is heavy on the commercial side but there are posters who specialize in the gourmet style, though rarely Neapolitan, which is one of the reasons why I suggested that he post on that forum. The site is down this morning (it has been having a lot of down time lately) otherwise I might have been able to find something on the site for him to review. But until such time as pizarest reveals his true intentions, or his plans, any advice is of questionable value.

I have few copies of the magazines and did indeed check their sites from time to time. PMQ to me suffers of heavy advertisemnt from questionable quality suppliers and lack of any expertise in the gourmet pizza side (not talking strictly Neapolitan but more Chris Bianco type). I fail to see on PMQ people making with expertise in wood ovens, quality flour etc...

As best I can tell, the most popular forums in the U.S. for pizza operators are the PMQ Think Tank and the Pizza Today forum at http://www.pizzatoday.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi. Of the two, the PMQ Think Tank is the more popular and the more active, although I think participation has declined since PMQTT changed its forum software and format. Also, it has had operational problems and a fair amount of downtime as a result.

I am not a professional, so I am not qualified to speak to the quality of the companies that place advertising with PMQ. But interest in artisanal pizzas and using wood- and gas-fired ovens is increasing, at least at the PMQ forum which I follow much more closely than the Pizza Today forum. There is actually quite a bit of interest in gourmet and specialty pizzas although much of it is in the context of using the more standard commercial ovens. That is understandable since there are simply a lot more of such ovens already in place and operational than the type of oven you have been promoting, even the type of oven Chris Bianco is using. On a few occasions, Evelyne Slomon has posted on the PMQTT forum on artisanal pizzas and different kinds of ovens that can be used for such pizzas, including the oven she uses in her restaurant.

I have also seen expressions of interest and requests for advice on using imported 00 flours, but it is clear that, at least in the past, the knowledge level has been quite low as to these flours, as noted, for example, in these two posts:

Fred Mortati at Caputo has occasionally tried to offer guidance, as he did here:http://www.pmq.com/cgi-bin/tt/index.cgi?noframes;read=29264. It's been a long, slow battle but apparently the word on the Caputo 00 flours is getting out there because Fred has been receiving a fair amount of interest from traditional pizza operators using deck and conveyor ovens, as well as from those are trying to make Neapolitan style pizzas.

Ultimately what pizarest decides to do will be based on the market he intends to serve and his plans and finances.

By "brick" oven I assume your talking about a brick lined traditional oven that you build a fire in and cook the pizza next to the fire.

My parents lived in Italy for 4 years, just got back last year. They bought a brick oven over there and moved it back here when they came back. It was about 5K in Italy and they spent another grand having it rebuilt over here. It makes some great pizza's!! But, you can only cook a couple of pizza's at a time and it's a lot of work building the fire, bringing it up to temp, stocking the wood, etc. A large enough one to cook say 4 pizza's at a time would take a lot of space and be very expensive. I visited them in Italy and went to quite a few pizzeria's and their ovens were huge in order to keep up w/the volume.

I use baker's pride electric stone ovens in my restaurant. They work perfectly and produce a great pizza. We bake on the pan for about 8 minutes at 475 and then 2 minutes right on the stone and it makes a perfect crisp thin crust pizza. I assume if you are considering stones or bricks you are looking for a thin crisp crust, if not get a conveyer. But, most baker's pride electric ovens come in either stone or brick (p44s stone, p44b brick) and you can get a brick lined electric oven. That's probably your best choice for an electric oven.

Also, you might check local codes for an open fire oven if that's your intention for a "brick" oven.